K-POP STRATEGIES WE SHOULD
PAY ATTENTION
It's no new to us that Korean idols go through intensive training for years where they learn how to sing, dance and most importantly: how to behave in public and how to act in interviews.
They learn how to be entertainers and their personalities are created strategically so that the public can identify with them immediately.
Now when we talk about personal marketing, we can make it simple and say t can be done in three main simple ways, you just need to know where to place:
1 - be someone people want to date
2- be someone people want to be friends with
3 -be someone people want to be
Starting with those 3 principles, the K-pop industry has been pre fabricating the idol's image even before they debut. Why is that? Because it makes them feel friendly and funny to the fans, bringing the feeling of intimacy, closeness and self-recognition.
The strategic team, based on data, creates a group with market purpose, so they create the group image - fashion, archetypes, self-insert, brand, etc -, concept - songs, perfomances, music videos, and group visual - to active the group market goals.
The goal is to turn the group/act so appealing that the fans fall in love instantly the the idol, so they and start caring and protecting as members of their own families.
One of K-Pop strategy is to make idols appeal to the public, from physical appearance to their personalities. Each group member has a different appeal - music skills, main dancer, main rapper, visual beauty, funny personality, chic personality and etc - according to the group's main strategy.
Each k-group/solo artist is created with goals and market visions. We see girl groups like Twice with a fanciful and cute concept, with the majority of fans being male (59%) between 21 to 30 (32%) and 10 to 20 (30%), on the other side we see Blackpink with a girl power concept, this kind concept has a greater appeal to the female public (61%) with the age range similar to twice.
As we can see the cute concept mostly appeals to the male public, the main principle of those cute groups is "being someone people want to date". The girl power for example, uses the "someone people want to be and be friends with" principle - that's why mostly of the content is turned to the group dynamic - and there's also the fabulous life, pretty people, clothes by famous designers, luxury parties and vacations, famous friends, etc… - which makes fans want to live like their idols, so they get inspired by their personalities, clothes and even their lives.
One of the strategies to increase the side effects of those groups is the creation of archetypes which makes fans connect easily with idols without the need to watch hours and hours of videos to know their personalities.
But archetypes in music aren't something strange to us, we already saw spice girls and their archetypes - Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, Posh Spice, Baby Spice, Ginger Spice - but the K-pop industry took the archetypes to the next level.
Along with archetypes, the self-insert character strategy is used. The self-insert strategy it's basically the fans seeing themselves in the idols personalities. The Idol personality, style, fashion and behaviour are created so the fans can live indirectly through their idols, and project their desires on the artists (just like we used to play with barbies when kids).
The self-insert strategy makes the idols and the idol's life become a fantasy the fan can live on and the create their own personality through the artists. The fantasy of a famous life, with parties, clothes, awards shows, and famous friends make the fans want to live as their own idols.
A practical example (and the most successful) of archetype and self-insert is the girl group Blackpink. They don't create as much music content as other K-pop groups, but even so they are the biggest girl group worldwide right now.being the first K-Pop act to perform at Coachella.
Blackpink consists of four girls, Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa. The group, even before debut, had the international market as the master goal, all of the girls speak Japanese and three of them speak English fluently.
As every idol group, each person has it's own role, Jisoo as the visual and lead vocal, Jennie the main rapper and lead vocalist, Rosé main vocalist and lead dancer and Lisa the main dancer, lead rapper and maknae (the youngest member). Besides these roles, each member has its own archetypes and self-inserts clearly defined.
Rosé is the ''indie girl'', a music lover who had her dream to becoming a famous singer came true.
Jisoo has one of the most used archetype on the K-pop industry, the girl next door. Charismatic, humble, funny and hardworking one, that everybody adores.
The two most famous archetypes for self-insert are:
Jennie: "The human Channel". The diva archetype - the fashionable but kinda moody person. Clothes designed by famous and exclusive brands, media scandals and love life that makes every teenage girl jealous of her and her live, after all who never wanted to be the most popular girl at school with amazing clothes and boyfriends?
Lisa: is one of - or so - the famous archetype. Lisa came from Thailand, so she doesn't have korean traits so strong, which makes her very famous abroad other countries and mainly in the west. This gives the fantasy of everybody in the world can be a K-Pop idol.
This archetype is extremely relatable to teenage fans giving the underdog
feeling. Lisa wasn't pretty and popular when younger but became one of the most prettier K-Pop idols in the world, that makes teenage girls dream being like her.
Besides her physical traits, her personality is very relatable as well, she's funny and cute, always making fun of the others members, making jokes and being awkwardly funny and cute but on the stage she becomes a woman with lot of attitude and self-confidence. Her duality makes girls with different styles relate to her personality. Her personality gets the best of the both worlds and that's why she is the most followed K-pop idol on Instagram and the most famous idol outside Korea.
Blackpink, besides the little music content released, are exposed in luxurious reality shows, fashions events, and they even are ambassadors for famous fashions clothes and makeup brands, all this to promote their archetypes and self-inserts.
It is worth saying that not every group has its archetypes and some groups one member can have more than one archetype. But if you're wondering how idols personalities become so striking to fans, i'll answer you: through mass dissemination.
The disclosure strategies from K-Pop groups have a strong social media present, reality shows, vlogs, interviews, variety shows and gossip. According to Schickel, the intimacy illusion stablished between the celebrity and the public trough media is the enchantment power basis, it's the media who gives the impression of ''the more you know a celebrity, closer you are to theirs and its life''.
This content strategies are one of the biggest K-Pop's weapons, it brings fans closer to idols and create a proximity illusion that makes fans think about idols as someone closer, a friend, a lover or even an authority.
Want to know more about K-Pop content strategies?
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